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caravan enforcement?
I get that goods will need to be transported by caravan, but how is that going to be enforced? We go out and mine iron for instance. If the iron is so heavy, how would we gather enough of it as individuals to bring back to the town to ship? Either the iron is light enough that we could just get 20 players together and walk it to the next node, or once it is refined to a sellable state it gains weight? Are we supposed to have pack mules that are like mini caravans as we walk back to town?
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Players will have a few options to transport goods
Mules
Pros : Less risk than a caravan when transporting goods.
Cons : Holds less than a caravan
Caravans
Pros: Holds a higher volume of goods than a Mule.
Cons: High risk transporting goods.
Transporting goods from node to node that we've seen in streams are perhaps trade route quest or the likes ^^ (we know this is the case for the PAX trade)
It may also be possible that initiating a caravan in the open world might first direct the player to the nearest node, then further trade destinations become available.
Most likely scenario is that you will mine till you have 100 units, transfer that to your mule, rinse repeat 10x, walk your mule to your freehold, rinse repeat 10x, form caravan and ship goods to desired market.
1. Individual player carry limit
2. Node funding
For individual limit, yes you could get around that by getting 20 players to walk the items, but even that is probably less that the total carry capacity for a caravan. The problem with this idea is you need 20 people to just go walk stuff around with no reward for doing it. Whereas with a caravan you get a reward for escorting it, or attacking it. Therefore why just carry crap around, when you can have a wagon haul it, and get a goodie for doing it?
For the issue of node funding, it appears there won't be any other way to get certain goods to the city for supplies. The mayor will select what the city needs, and then you'll have the option to caravan those items in, and they go directly to city stores. While it may be possible for you to drop them off locally just carrying it, the resource need will be massive (IE caravan load size). Additionally, with caravan PvP being a focus point, i can't see Intrepid allowing the playerbase to make them irrelevant.
I'm not sure if it was part of the original question, but others have asked about protecting the caravan. When a caravan is purchased you will have the option to hire guards. You can send out a caravan with nothing, or any level of guards between light - heavy protection. This is important because say a hermit crafter needs to send something he may want to pay for heavy protection because he has no guild. On the other side, the guild may not purchase guards at all, and instead have 50 guildies walking the caravan to safety.
Will they be 2 shooted whith 200 hp, or something like 50K hp no attack, or 50K hp and they 2 shoot you ? will they be worth hiring them ?
No matter what they decide on for guards, they are just going to be an augment to actual players escorting caravans. You may have your group of 10 friends all ready to take someone elses stuff, then find out when you roll up on it that they have 40 friends waiting just around the corner who mess your day up in addition to the guards they paid for.
Another factor for balancing will be win conditions. Can people just run right by the guards and burn down the caravans, loot certificates, then run off? Does success involve killing all npc guards or all flagged as defenders in the declaration zone? If I know that I can just ignore the guards or have people engage them while others burn down the objective to win, you know that is going to happen.
I would envision the NPC system to be more of a supplement: only 6 of your allies are able to come help protect a caravan, better pop in a few mercs to flesh it out a little, rather than hiring 10 mercs to solely guard.
Will depend a lot on the value of the goods that you are transporting, the popularity of the route and time of day though. It is going to be an interesting part of the game, trying to decide on caravan routes and defences.
My real worry with the whole system is the actual carrying capacity of the individual. If you are a gatherer, it will be incredibly tiresome if you have to run back to a node or freehold every 30 minutes. I know this is what mules are for, but we don't really know anything about them: are they slow, like walking speed, so it will feel like a 20 minute escort quest to get your goods back to your freehold/node?
I am reserving judgement on the whole kit and kaboodle until we actually have some detailed information, not just an off-the-cuff comment during a Q&A or stream. It is something that is key to my approach to the game, so watching closely.